| name | questionnaire |
| description | Turn a decision the user can't fully answer into a Markdown questionnaire for the one person who can — filled in async, or together over a meeting. Adapted from Matt Pocock's to-questionnaire. |
questionnaire
Turn something the user can't answer alone into a questionnaire — a
Markdown document they hand to one person to fill in async, or fill out
together over a meeting. The recipient holds knowledge the user lacks; the
questionnaire pulls it out of them.
Grill the send, not the subject. Interview the user only about the
send, which they can always answer: who it goes to, and what they need
back. The questions in the document then target the gap between what the
recipient knows and what the user needs.
-
Who is it going to? Ask, in one exchange, the recipient's role,
expertise, and relationship to the user. This fixes the questionnaire's
tone and how much context it must carry. Done when you know who the
recipient is and what they know that the user doesn't.
-
What do you need back? Ask, in one exchange, the specific decisions
or facts the user can't resolve alone and needs from this person. Done
when you have a concrete list of what the user must walk away able to do
or decide.
-
Write the questionnaire. Draft questions aimed at the gap from steps
1–2, following the Document structure below. When an active bundle owns
the decision, write it to
.waymark/active/<work-id>/QUESTIONNAIRE-<slug>.md and note it as
a Blocker in that bundle's NOTES.md; otherwise write
questionnaire-<slug>.md in the current directory. Report the path.
Done when the file exists and every item the user named in step 2 is
covered by a question.
When the answers come back, they are settled forks: fold them into the
bundle's SPEC.md (or the pending decision) and clear the Blocker — the
filled questionnaire is the evidence the decision cites.
Document structure
Frame the document as a discovery questionnaire: the user lacks context,
the recipient holds it. Order questions most-important-first — async means
you may only get one pass — and group them under ## headings by theme once
there are more than a handful. Write it using the template below.
Purpose: why this questionnaire exists and the decision riding on it.
From: — To: — How your answers will be
used:
Context
One paragraph orienting a recipient who wasn't in the user's head. Enough to
answer well, not a page.
How to answer
Deadline and rough effort. Partial answers and "I don't know" are useful —
flag anything you're unsure of rather than skipping it.
One ## section per theme. Under each, its questions, most-important-first.
Every question is one idea — never compound — with an answer stub directly
beneath, and a one-line why this matters only where the question could be
misread or invite a throwaway answer.
### What load is the system expected to handle at launch?
Why this matters: it decides whether we provision for burst traffic now or
defer it.
Anything else?
A closing catch-all: anything we didn't ask that we should know?
